Almost a year ago, Infonetics Research released excerpts from its quarterly report entitled “Residential and Enterprise Femtocell Equipment,” which tracks femtocells by market segment, technology and form factor. At that time, the forecast, covering a four year period, was that sales of 3G femtocells continued to dominate the market with residential femtocells accounting for the bulk of the market.
In the world of telecommunications, a femtocell is a small, low-power cellular base station. It is typically designed for use in a home or small business. A femtocell falls under the category of being a subset of the more widespread small cell. It connects to the service provider’s network through a broadband connection.
This week, we have a new report from ABI Research entitled “Enterprise and Consumer Femtocells Market Research.” This current report foresees only a slow and steady growth, over the next five years, for residential femtocell products. On the other hand, ABI Research’s study also shows that we can expect to see the current rise in enterprise units to continue. In fact, the steady growth should lead to revenue reaching about $4.2 billion by 2019.
As stated in Infonetics’ study of 2013, it does appear that femtocell deployments continue to focus mostly on 3G units. It also appears that this scenario is now beginning to change. One major factor is the current, ongoing deployment of LTE networks. It will not be long now before the entire U.S. will have a reliable LTE network, this in turn, has led to a growing demand for multi-mode products.
Another area where both last year’s and this year’s studies are in agreement is the fact that Cisco has been leading the market and will continue to do so. At this point in time Cisco offers small cell as add-on units which are designed to integrate with its deployed Wi-Fi solution. If all of the predictions over the past year are correct, then we could be looking at integrated units accounting for at least 50 percent of the total revenue by 2019.
Ahmed Ali, who is a research analyst at ABI Research, made the following comments, “Enhancing femtocell data handling capabilities with Wi-Fi integration increases revenue opportunities through direct means like value-added services or indirectly through data offloading. Additional features like multi-mode and Wi-Fi integration, coupled with customized services like voice/data plans, hosted management and location-based applications justify subscription fees for the enterprise.”
It is reasonable to expect that unit prices will begin to decrease. As this happens, both vendors and service providers will be looking for additional ways to support and maintain revenue. As you can see from this statement, this will most likely be accomplished by adopting subscription charging schemes.
ABI Research’s report also shows that on a regional development basis, North America and Asia-Pacific maintain the largest share. Europe is beginning to catch, which will most likely increase as additional LTE networks are deployed, while Latin America and the Middle East are only just beginning to develop an appeal for femtocell solutions at the present time.
Edited by
Maurice Nagle 
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